Gun Rights versus Gun Control in the United States

To be clear, you are saying it is impossible for one instance to occur where I (or anyone in the world) to handle a gun while assuming it is unloaded, point the firearm towards something I do not wish to destroy, with my finger on the trigger, and without knowing what is near where it is pointing and what it beyond without killing someone?Evidently a learning session on what the words sufficient and necessary actually mean are required for this thread.

To be clear, you are saying it is impossible for one instance to occur where I (or anyone in the world) to handle a gun while assuming it is unloaded, point the firearm towards something I do not wish to destroy, with my finger on the trigger, and without knowing what is near where it is pointing and what it beyond without killing someone?Evidently a learning session on what the words sufficient and necessary actually mean are required for this thread.

Dear lord. Are you angling for the pedant of the year award?

Evidently you haven't encountered the words "necessary and/or/nor sufficient" at work before. And I'm a frikkin engineer. Not a philosophy prof.

If you actually want to reduce gun accidents, I think having Hollywood learn and represent the four rules when not plot-inappropriate would be the least intrusive and the most bang for the buck. People not trained otherwise will copy the behavior they've seen

Do you have some sort of evidence to back that up? Current evidence indicates higher ownership rates is associated with higher accident rates. This is established comparing high ownership states to low ownership states.

The presence of a gun is kind of necessary to have a gun accident, I don't think anyone is contesting that. I bet that North Korea has an extraordinarily low vehicle death rate, but that's not because they're safer drivers.

This discussion hasn't really been about guns versus no-guns, but rather what factors influence the frequency of gun-related accidents when guns are present. Obviously you can't have a gun accident without a gun, but that's not a particularly useful or interesting observation.

This is the convenient equivalence we've seen from pro-gun advocates between gun violence and lethal violence. While gun violence deaths may correlate with gun prevalence levels, lethal violence does not.

New York is now revoking gun permits held by those who receive medication for anxiety. LINK

Confiscation after registration, happens nearly every time.

And for the inevitable retort that loosing a license is not confiscation, do you not understand that such a thing comes with an unspoken, but very much understood by all parties, "or else we'll kill you" attached to it?

New York is now revoking gun permits held by those who receive medication for anxiety. LINK

Confiscation after registration, happens nearly every time.

And for the inevitable retort that loosing a license is not confiscation, do you not understand that such a thing comes with an unspoken, but very much understood by all parties, "or else we'll kill you" attached to it?

The correct term is Seizure. Once the state makes something illegal the item in question is Seized. Which is what is happening here. It sucks for the people involved and I personally think it's wrong, but you are using the wrong term.

Seizure after registration, and once something is made illegal for the people in question to own.

Legal goods are Confiscated, which by the law in this case the good in question ((the gun)) is no longer legal for them to have. So the term Confiscation is wrong.

And notice.. the supposedly pro-gun State Police are the ones deciding to, and the seizing his guns. When police say they like guns, it is "their" guns, not a generalized right to own them. This is what I was I was referring to as police tendency to be conflicted.. or to put it more accurately a bunch of authorotarian hypocrites.

The correct term is Seizure. Once the state makes something illegal the item in question is Seized. Which is what is happening here. It sucks for the people involved and I personally think it's wrong, but you are using the wrong term.

This is pointlessly pedantic, he's only "using the wrong term" if you assume he's using a very specific term of legal art. And even that assumes that there is only one true legal definition of the term, when in reality a term can be defined one way for one statute and be defined in a completely different manner in another statute.

Merriam-Webster offers one definition as "to seize by or as if by authority". The Wikipedia entry refers to confiscation as "a legal seizure without compensation by a government or other public authority", and seems to have drawn it's definition from old public-domain versions of Encyclopædia Britannica. Both of those definitions would seem to apply here. In both cases the word seizure is used to define confiscation, they're synonyms.

New York is now revoking gun permits held by those who receive medication for anxiety. LINK

Based on the facts as presented, that's unacceptable. Being treated for anxiety with your basic anti-anxiety medication shouldn't be grounds for suspension of license or moved to a prohibited persons list. There is a difference between treating acute anxiety and, say, anti-psychotics. This is a great example of how the SAFE act is critically flawed.

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Confiscation after registration, happens nearly every time.

Prohibited persons lists are orthogonal to registration.

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And for the inevitable retort that loosing a license is not confiscation, do you not understand that such a thing comes with an unspoken, but very much understood by all parties, "or else we'll kill you" attached to it?

Pretty much any law that prohibits something or influences behavior has an "or else we'll kill you" implied behind, by that same logic. Don't speed, or we'll kill you! Show up to court when summoned, or we'll kill you! Don't kill someone, or we'll kill you! Your dramatic reading is stupid.

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This is a real example of a real problem, but flapping your arms around and squawking the rote, practiced GRA nonsense does nothing to advance the actual underlying issue.

The correct term is Seizure. Once the state makes something illegal the item in question is Seized. Which is what is happening here. It sucks for the people involved and I personally think it's wrong, but you are using the wrong term.

This is pointlessly pedantic, he's only "using the wrong term" if you assume he's using a very specific term of legal art. And even that assumes that there is only one true legal definition of the term, when in reality a term can be defined one way for one statute and be defined in a completely different manner in another statute.

Merriam-Webster offers one definition as "to seize by or as if by authority". The Wikipedia entry refers to confiscation as "a legal seizure without compensation by a government or other public authority", and seems to have drawn it's definition from old public-domain versions of Encyclopædia Britannica. Both of those definitions would seem to apply here. In both cases the word seizure is used to define confiscation, they're synonyms.

It's a perfectly reasonable way to use the word.

Will New York police also seize the ammo clips for the guns as well?

Edit: I'll add that 'confiscation after registration' just rhymes better and makes a catchy fear-phrase. Not so much with "seizure after registration".

There have been several high-profile arrests in New York of individuals whose only crime was possession of so-called "large capacity magazines". The property was taken away in the process, whether you prefer the term "seizure" or "confiscation" or something else. So to answer your question, yes.

There have been several high-profile arrests in New York of individuals whose only crime was possession of so-called "large capacity magazines". The property was taken away, seized or confiscated or whatever term you prefer, in the process. So yes.

The pedantry aside, Dietz's example has little to do with the normal "ermahgerd, confrestraion" posting macro. It's an issue of who gets to be on a prohibited persons list. Any state with any kind of gun licensing would be able to send such a letter and even if a state had no licensing, it would a matter of sooner or later before the person was "caught" in some way.

I'm actually not sure what you mean, I just thought I was answering a fairly simple question.

What strikes me as the really strange thing here is that gun-control proponents seem to have such an aversion to the term "confiscation". What else would the purpose of making possession of an item illegal be for, it not to take it away? I've never seen this kind of objection to such a simple term when we talk about the police confiscating other contraband items like drugs and explosives, but when it comes to firearms it's like no one wants to call a spade a spade.

Just because we're probably not talking about SWAT teams rappelling in from black helicopters and kicking in doors because they got an anonymous tip about an "assault magazine" in someone's home still doesn't make it not confiscation.

MightySpoon wrote:

The pedantry aside, Dietz's example has little to do with the normal "ermahgerd, confrestraion" posting macro. It's an issue of who gets to be on a prohibited persons list.

You're just describing a means of implementation. Chipping away at the list of people who are allowed to own firearms, and placing ever expanding limitations on what they're allowed to own, or both at the same time until you arrive at a defacto ban.

The correct term is Seizure. Once the state makes something illegal the item in question is Seized. Which is what is happening here. It sucks for the people involved and I personally think it's wrong, but you are using the wrong term.

This is pointlessly pedantic, he's only "using the wrong term" if you assume he's using a very specific term of legal art. And even that assumes that there is only one true legal definition of the term, when in reality a term can be defined one way for one statute and be defined in a completely different manner in another statute.

Merriam-Webster offers one definition as "to seize by or as if by authority". The Wikipedia entry refers to confiscation as "a legal seizure without compensation by a government or other public authority", and seems to have drawn it's definition from old public-domain versions of Encyclopædia Britannica. Both of those definitions would seem to apply here. In both cases the word seizure is used to define confiscation, they're synonyms.

It's a perfectly reasonable way to use the word.

Sure and common usage has Clips and Magazines meaning the same thing as well. Common usage now has rifles with black plastic being Assualt Rifles as well.

Using the legal term in this case makes sense because we are talking about an application of the law.

The pedantry aside, Dietz's example has little to do with the normal "ermahgerd, confrestraion" posting macro. It's an issue of who gets to be on a prohibited persons list.

You're just describing a means of implementation. Chipping away at the list of people who are allowed to own firearms, and placing ever expanding limitations on what they're allowed to own, or both at the same time until you arrive at a defacto ban.

No, I'm really not. The specifics of that case matter. It's an intersection of issues of what constitutes mental illness, who and how a person gets on a prohibited person's list.

It has nothing to do with registration and only tangentially has anything to with confiscation, in the sense that anyone (felons, etc.) who get on the list will have their shit "confiscated" at some point. If this person killed someone, no one would bitch about it being "confiscated". The issue is how and when people get onto prohibited person's lists and, specifically in this case, how mental health issues impact that.

GRAs that ignore these specifics and stick to their unexamined, oft-repeated argumentative macros take themselves out of the conversation. No one should be compelled to consider these ridiculous arguments like, for example, Dietz's post which has basically no real relation to linked activity. It's further ridiculous that, due to these stupid fucking arguments, every time they are invoked, there has to be an argument about the literal or legal meaning of "confiscation".

They don't prove that "the possible presence of safety features is irrelevant with respect to safe handling". To do so you'd have to show that they are both necessary and sufficient to safe handling of any and every gun. That in turn would require showing that any gun can be safely handled. You yourself have already presented a counter example - viz. a gun that can fire without being activated by the trigger.

Being dropped isn't handling, and yet no negligence is required for a drop to happen.

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Rather than provide any argument in an attempt to meet the heavy burden you have laid out for yourself you gave us a bare appeal to authority. Hence my quip about Mount Sinai.

I certainly understand your quip; I don't understand your argument.

If a gun is always treated as loaded and never pointed at anything one isn't willing to destroy and so forth, then handling isn't negligent. It doesn't mean accidents can't happen, like ricochets, or unknown persons hiding behind targets.

I hate to break it to you, but the "Four Rules" didn't come down from Mt. Sinai with Moses. An appeal to their perceived authority for any particular claim is entirely unconvincing.

Please explain in what way they are deficient for providing safe handling of weapons.

Non sequitur. Are you claiming that the Four Noble Truths Rules should be treated as veritates e coelo delapsoe?

I'm not claiming anything, just trying to understand your position. And please, skip the latin. Not all of us are lawyers. Explain what you are driving at.

Neither of those phrases are legalisms.

All the more reason for you to explain what you are driving at.

He's complaining that failure to follow the four rules don't inherently give grounds to arrest anyone, essentially. Because they're not law and not physics they can't be effective as far as Faramir is concerned.

I'm still waiting to hear how the magical rules prove that "the possible presence of safety features is irrelevant with respect to safe handling"

'Safety' features -- specifically manual safeties and chamber-loaded indicators -- don't prevent negligent discharges from causing injuries, as demonstrated by examples of negligent discharges involving firearms with those safety features. Following the Four Rules prevents negligent discharges and culpable injury by design. You may not like the circular reasoning, but it's true that if one never points a firearm negligently, and never touches the trigger negligently, that there should be no way there's culpability for any purposeful discharge.

I draw a distinction as to culpability to segregate cases where a reasonable person couldn't have known that the target area wasn't clear, or ricochet injuries that could happen during a legitimate defense shooting. I'm also not talking about possible mechanical defects or physics issues like dropping or cook-offs. There are lawsuits where people swear they didn't press a trigger and that the firearm manufacturer is at fault, and I'm not inclined to debate those when it comes to discussions of the four rules of firearm safety.

Some people simply can't be deterred. I'd think that crimes of negligence, including recklessness, probably falls into that category more often than intentional ones. I agree that if a crime and a person where of the type to be deterred then the death of e.g. his son would probably be enough. But if he's simply a reckless person then incapacity can certainly play a role.

I don't think there's really that many people in that group. Do you?Also we don't generally hand out life sentences for negligence, and the value of incapacitating someone for (eg) 5 years is not striking me as averting a great many accidents. I understand incapacitation for willful crimes, but for negligence I am struggling to find it significant, given the shorter period of incapacitation and the randomness of their occurrence.

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Are you now saying that no crimes of negligence should be punished? That's an expansion over simply those who have already suffered greatly for their negligence.

No they still need deterrence. I'm challenging the idea that we need retribution in all cases of criminal justice. Do we demand retribution from the criminally insane? Or those incompetent to stand trial? To me, it makes sense if our desire for retribution is in balance with the defendant's desire to commit the crime. Take away the willfulness of the crime (such as with the insane or with the accidental), and then why wouldn't we also drop the element of retribution?

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As for Kant, that's really just a short hand for a school of retributive justice.

The "safety features" under discussion are neither necessary nor sufficient to prevent accidents.

The Four Rules are necessary and sufficient for preventing accidents.

That's an awfully strong claim. M Jones made it implicitly, I'm surprised to see you endorse it explicitly.

A single counter example is enough to demolish the argument. Take sufficiency: nothing in the four rules prevents a gun accident as a result of bad ammunition exploding in the chamber.

Pont summarised more succinctly than I.

There is clearly no culpable negligence in firearm handling if faulty gun or ammunition causes a burst firing chamber. There may be culpable negligence in the manufacture or even handling of those items.

Perhaps they should be implemented into law, and anyone observed breaking the rules loses the right for continued firearm ownership/access.

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It has been implied that breaking any of the 4 rules is negligent. Why protect those who demonstrate their negligence with firearms? I'm not even saying we have to throw them in jail. They simply lose their ability to access and own firearms after demonstrating their neglect.

For the same reason we don't imprison drivers who fail to signal when changing lanes.

Your monomania in depriving residents of their civil rights worries me. Might you next argue that residents lacking education should also be deprived of their rights?

Perhaps they should be implemented into law, and anyone observed breaking the rules loses the right for continued firearm ownership/access.

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It has been implied that breaking any of the 4 rules is negligent. Why protect those who demonstrate their negligence with firearms? I'm not even saying we have to throw them in jail. They simply lose their ability to access and own firearms after demonstrating their neglect.

For the same reason we don't imprison drivers who fail to signal when changing lanes.

Your monomania in depriving residents of their civil rights worries me. Might you next argue that residents lacking education should also be deprived of their rights?

New York is now revoking gun permits held by those who receive medication for anxiety. LINK

I was surprised by the lack of Soapbox commentary when BATFE made explicit the policy that anyone with a 'medical marijuana' prescription was, by definition, a user of a prohibited sunstance, and couldn't answer the relevant Form 4473 question in any way other than affirmative, and thus could not buy guns.

I'm not claiming that a manual safety, or loaded chamber indicated is such a reasonable safety regulation. The only one I've actually said is pretty reasonable is a that guns don't fire when dropped. Really it's a rather small, and I would think non-controversial point, I was trying to make.

Guns of relatively recent manufacture (say the last fifty years) almost never fire when dropped or otherwise when the trigger is not pressed. This is enforced through tort law.

Related discussion: the ArmaLite and Kalashnikov rifles have free-floating firing pins -- not held back by springs as in many commercial designs -- which is safe because the primers of military ammunition are slightly harder than commercial ammunition.

Common usage now has rifles with black plastic being Assualt Rifles as well.

My perception is that this dramatic misnomer has gone from niche usage to a few prominent commentator's lips in recent months.

At a guess, the reason is related to Josh Sugarmann, currently executive director of a gun-control lobbying group:

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"Assault weapons -- just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms -- are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons -- anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun -- can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons."

U.S. boy, 6, dies after being shot in head by 4-year-old playmate 'A 6-year-old boy who was accidentally shot in the head by a 4-year-old playmate has died from his wounds, authorities said Tuesday night.

Ocean County prosecutor’s office spokesman Al Della Fave confirmed Brandon Holt had died but said he couldn’t provide further details. Toms River police Chief Michael Mastronardy said Holt was pronounced dead at 5 p.m. Tuesday, nearly 24 hours after the shooting occurred in a neighbourhood that residents described as “very quiet.”

....“I’m sad for the children involved and their families, but I’m angry with whoever owns that gun and allowed a little child to get hold of it. A 4-year-old can’t load a gun,” said Debi Coto, who lives a few doors down. “I had just been telling my sister how nice it is to see kids playing together and enjoying themselves, and then this happens.”

Coto said the 4-year-old’s mother seemed very upset in the minutes after the shooting and appeared to be trying to comprehend what had happened.

The shooting came just days after a 4-year-old boy in Tennessee grabbed a loaded gun at a family cookout and accidentally shot to death the wife of a sheriff’s deputy and amid debate over gun control laws in the wake of December’s Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre."

Perhaps they should be implemented into law, and anyone observed breaking the rules loses the right for continued firearm ownership/access.

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It has been implied that breaking any of the 4 rules is negligent. Why protect those who demonstrate their negligence with firearms? I'm not even saying we have to throw them in jail. They simply lose their ability to access and own firearms after demonstrating their neglect.

For the same reason we don't imprison drivers who fail to signal when changing lanes.

Your monomania in depriving residents of their civil rights worries me. Might you next argue that residents lacking education should also be deprived of their rights?

You are thinking of MGT and his desire to label anyone not trained in firearms as not legally educated.

No. This thread may not have much actually meaningful discussion lately (in terms of moving posters' opinions), but it's an effective honeypot for keeping this highly contentious issue from polluting other threads.

A man accused of stabbing more than a dozen people at a suburban Houston community college randomly selected his victims and told investigators he had been fantasizing about conducting such an attack since he was 8 years old, authorities said Wednesday.

Dylan Quick, 20, has been charged with three counts of aggravated assault in the Tuesday attack at the Lone Star Community College in Cypress, a school he attended about 20 miles northwest of Houston.

Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia said Quick has been "forthcoming" with investigators and indicted to them that he had been planning the attack for some time. Garcia said authorities were investigating a motive but that the attacks at the school's health sciences center appeared to be random.

Quick slashed at his victims with a razor utility knife, and a similar weapon was found in his backpack when he was apprehended, Quick said. Several of the 14 victims were hospitalized but all were expected to survive.

Campus President Audre Levy said college police were notified of the attack at 11:13 a.m. Tuesday and that Quick was taken into custody at 11:17 a.m. Authorities said students assisted by tackling Quick and holding him down outside the health science building until police arrived.

Neighbors said Quick was a shy young man who would say hello when he took out the trash and helped his parents to tend the yard, though he rarely came out alone.

"I can't imagine what would have happened to that young man to make him do something like this. He is very normal," said Magdalena Lopez, 48, who has lived across the street from the Quick family for 15 years.

The Quicks were friendly and fit in well with the other families on the block of brick, ranch-style homes. Most were aware that Quick is deaf. A street sign, "Deaf Child In Area," was posted on the block to warn drivers.

"I can't believe he would do it," Lopez added.

But hours after the stabbing attack, Quick was charged with the attack and authorities were seen leaving Quick's home with two brown paper bags.

No one answered the door or the phone at the red brick home, though two vehicles were parked in the driveway, one of them a Honda Accord with a license plate that read "DYLAN." It was not immediately known if Quick has an attorney.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gave senators leading bipartisan talks on a compromise amendment for expanding background checks on gun buyers an ultimatum: Figure it out by 5 p.m., when Reid planned to file a motion to move to debate of his broader package of gun control legislation, which includes measures to improve school safety and crack down on gun traffickers.

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) managed to strike a deal, and on Wednesday morning they held a press conference on Capitol Hill outlining their amendment, which Manchin said would be the first on the gun control bill when Reid introduces it for an initial vote on Thursday. (Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who introduced the background check provisions that cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote, told reporters on Tuesday that although some details needed working out, he supported the Manchin-Toomey compromise.) The amendment would require background checks on all gun sales in person and over the internet with the exception of transfers between "friends and neighbors." It's unclear how broad that exception will be in practice, but the Washington Post reported that the background check requirement "would not cover private transactions between individuals, unless there was advertising or an online service involved." Private dealers would be required to keep records of gun sales, as licensed dealers have already been doing since 1968. Gun sellers who allow prohibited people to buy firearms would face a felony charge.

I'm not thrilled by the record-keeping requirements either. Licensed dealers face pretty stiff punishment if they're unable to produce documentation of a sale they made, and they're required to keep those records for twenty years. I don't care for the idea of someone who sold a gun in good faith some number of years ago facing prison time when the feds come snooping around and demand to see a piece of paper.

If a requirement like this were implemented I'd probably go through FFLs for any private sales regardless, just to transfer the risk from myself to the dealer. Who wants to go to jail for being unable to find a receipt?

I'm not thrilled by the record-keeping requirements either. Licensed dealers face pretty stiff punishment if they're unable to produce documentation of a sale they made, and they're required to keep those records for twenty years. I don't care for the idea of someone who sold a gun in good faith some number of years ago facing prison time when the feds come snooping around and demand to see a piece of paper.

If a requirement like this were implemented I'd probably go through FFLs for any private sales regardless, just to transfer the risk from myself to the dealer. Who wants to go to jail for being unable to find a receipt?

I have no problem with it, honestly. I mean it's pretty clear to me the last few times I've been to a gun show that there are many people who are acting like dealers and selling in pretty large numbers but somehow are skating by with not being dealers. I don't know if this will solve anything, but if you are selling that many guns per year you can buy a safe to put the backgrounding in and just keep your records there.

I have no problem with it, honestly. I mean it's pretty clear to me the last few times I've been to a gun show that there are many people who are acting like dealers and selling in pretty large numbers but somehow are skating by with not being dealers. I don't know if this will solve anything, but if you are selling that many guns per year you can buy a safe to put the backgrounding in and just keep your records there.

Except the record-keeping requirement doesn't just apply to the private dealer who resides in the gray area between licensed dealer and private individual, it would apply to the person who happened to sell a gun that one time however many years ago. Fail to produce the documentation on demand, and go to jail.

Solomonoff's Secret wrote:

eXceLon wrote:

More details have been released about the knife attack in Texas yesterday:

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Quick slashed at his victims with a razor utility knife

I thought it was strange that so many people got stabbed and survived but the fact that he slashed, not stabbed, like the Chinese spree-slasher, explains it.

That's what I was thinking. Slashing with razors tends to produce bloody but relatively superficial wounds, unless you happen to get a (un)lucky hit on a major artery and manage to bleed out before help arrives. If he'd gone on a stabbing spree with a kitchen knife, there probably would have been a few fatalities.

Closes the gun show and other loopholes while exempting temporary transfers and transfers between family members.

Fixes interstate travel laws for sportsmen who transport their firearms across state lines in a responsible manner. The term “transport” includes staying in temporary lodging overnight, stopping for food, buying fuel, vehicle maintenance, andmedical treatment.

Protects sellers from lawsuits if the weapon cleared through the expanded background checks and is subsequently used in a crime. This is the same treatment gun dealers receive now.

Allows dealers to complete transactions at gun shows that take place in a state for which they are not a resident.

Requires that if a background check at a gun show does not result in a definitive response from NICS within 48 hours, the sale may proceed. After four years, when the NICS improvements are completed, the background check would clear in 24 hours. Current law is three business days.

Requires the FBI to give priority to finalizing background checks at gun shows over checks at store front dealerships.

Authorizes use of a state concealed carry permit instead of a background checkwhen purchasing a firearm from a dealer.

Permits interstate handgun sales from dealers.

Allows active military to buy firearms in their home states.

Family transfers and some private sales (friends, neighbors, other individuals) are exempt from background checks